Bulu is the language of the Bulu people of Cameroon. The language had 174,000 native speakers in 1982, with some 800,000 second language speakers in 1991. Colonial and missionary groups formerly used Bulu as a lingua franca in the region for commercial, educational, and religious purposes, though it is today becoming less frequent in those spheres. Dialects include Bene, Yelinda, Yembana, Yengono, and Zaman.